We're so politically correct, nobody wants to say the word, but isn't another word for that [enhanced interrogation] torture?Of course, he immediately follows up by saying torture is a great thing we should use more often, so maybe, uh, not-so-good after all.
waterboarding, which is a mock execution and thus an exquisite form of torture. As such, [it and other forms of torture] are prohibited by American laws and values, and I oppose themand then follows two paragraphs later with
I don’t believe anyone should be prosecuted for having used these techniques, and I agree that the administration should state definitively that they won’t be. I am one of the authors of the Military Commissions Act, and we wrote into the legislation that no one who used or approved the use of these interrogation techniques before its enactment should be prosecuted. I don’t think it is helpful or wise to revisit that policy.So it was torture, it's against our values, it's illegal, but hey, it was Washington insiders who allowed it, so no one should, you know, be punished.
I mean, of course John McCain is depressed. At one time, he belived in things. In Straight Talk, in standing up to his own party when he thought it was wrong, that Jerry Falwell and James Dobsons were power-hungry hypocrites, that one could be honorable and a politician.The guy is still looking for that last hurrah, or at least to be noticed. His (probably last) campaign over, he still wants a "legacy", the approbation of the public audience, the roar of the crowd, something to drown out the insistent voice in his head, a voice that gets louder with each passing day.
[. . . .]
And then in '08, when after years of striving and, latterly, years of compromising his integrity and swallowing whatever he was told to swallow -- even acquiescing to the United States government performing tortures John McCain had suffered at the hands of the Vietnamese Communists -- he finally gets to run for President. Finally triumphs after primary after primary where his own party complains he's too liberal, too angry, too "temperamental" to trust with the red Button.
Finally triumphs even though the idiot he supported in '04 wouldn't support him until all other primary contenders had fallen by the wayside. Finally triumphs, but has so little money he has to find a cynical loophole around the very campaign finance reforms he once championed. Finally triumps even though he has to disparage the very immigration reform bill he authored.
Finally gets the nomination triumphs by cutting off piece after piece of himself, littering the campaign trail with his abandoned beliefs, his former ideals, the very skin and shards of his integrity.
[. . . .]
And so abandoning his last ideal -- that he should pick a running mate who is best for America, who actually could pick up the reins if John McCain were once more in a crisis shot down like he was that day in Vietnam --, John McCain nods his head and stiffles his anger and does as he's told. Does as he's told by handlers and fixers and con-men who never put on the uniform, who had other priorities when the country needed them, who certainly got nowhere close to a a tiger cage in the Hanoi Hilton.
[. . . .]
He's given up almost everything he ever believed in (except his hope of winning a replay of a war he, and we, lost 33 years ago). His former friends have left him and have no respect for him. His closest advisors are the merry gang that shivved him and shat on him from 2000 until last month. His ideals abandoned, his integrity in tatters, all McCain the Presidential candidate can do is hope to win by excoriating all that McCain the Maverick stood for.
Of course he's depressed. He's an empty shell of a man, his ideals and integrity and his guts and soul all willingly ripped out in the hope that, at long last, those will finally be the last sacrifices he needs offer up, to win his last hurrah.
John McCain is not some good, or decent, or honest, or honorable, or ethical man, who just sometimes trusts some bad elements against his better judgment.
« Older ro.me... | Frederik and Gerrit Braun, ene... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by echo target at 6:52 PM on May 12, 2011 [16 favorites]